Wireless computing technologies provide untethered access to the Internet and other networks. One of the most critical technologies for wireless networking (or Wi-Fi) is the IEEE 802.11 family of protocols promulgated by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Currently, the protocols are widely adopted in wireless devices such as laptop computers, tablet computers, smart phones, and network appliances.
A VLAN (virtual local access network) networks a group of computers together that are not necessarily connected to the same LAN. As a result, one member can broadcast a message to all of the VLAN members using a single packet sent to the Ethernet broadcast or a multicast address rather than sending individual packets to each member. Conventionally, an access point maintains a VLAN table which correlates the Ethernet broadcast or multicast address to particular unicast addresses of each member of that VLAN. It is the access point that sends the frame in a unicast message to each of the members to complete the communication. However, access points typically have low processing capabilities and the burden of multiple address translations for a single message can slow down traffic throughput at the access point.
Another conventional technique dedicates an access point to a particular VLAN. In this way, each of the members share the same BSSID of the access point. Because of the unified membership, the access point can simply broadcast VLAN messages to all connected computers without the additional processing. Problematically, this requires a static association of members to a VLAN which is often not feasible in Enterprise Wireless LAN networks where the members that share same BSSID are dynamically associated to a VLAN based on a user defined policy
What is needed is a robust technique for access points to implement a VLAN that leverages the processing conservation of broadcasting without making the access point unavailable to other stations.